


Herringbone on a Snowy Day

by AnonymousHeavyIndustries



Category: Free!
Genre: Boys In Love, Canon Compliant, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Holding Hands, M/M, Sharing Clothes, Wholesome Entertainment, call the cops because I've clearly gone mental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 08:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11123118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousHeavyIndustries/pseuds/AnonymousHeavyIndustries
Summary: Makoto and Haru share gloves, quiet moments, and the pleasure of each other's company after Iwatobi's Annual Snow Festival.Set during S1.





	Herringbone on a Snowy Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unknown Commenter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Unknown+Commenter).



> AKA that one reader who really loves Makoto but really hates how he usually gets treated in my stories.
> 
> Story [theme.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32YnBIhAsXI)

They sat shoulder to shoulder, listening to the familiar rattle and rock of the traincar as snow-laden pines and frosted mountains whooshed past, legs still trembling from the cold that clung to their bones and made their toes hard nubs in their tennies.

"This snow just won't let up, will it? How many centimetres do you think we got today?" Makoto shifted, mindful to not stray too far from the patch of seat that had warmed to him, clasping his frozen hands together in an attempt to resurrect them.

"Too many." Haru hummed, breathing onto his naked fingertips. Despite his slight frame, wintry weather rarely bothered him the way it did Makoto, who couldn't leave the house without looking prepped for an Arctic expedition. He scarcely seemed to realize that he was a human furnace, opting to swaddle himself in wool and hot cocoa and blanketsblanketsblankets to the point where just looking at him caused Haru to sweat up a storm.

"The snow festival was fun. I'm glad we went."

Haru leaned back with a subdued, "Yeah. It was nice seeing the snow sculptures. Maybe I'll build one someday."

"And the snowball fight?"

"It was fine too, I guess."

Makoto's eyes wandered to Haru's bony bluewhite fingers. "I can't believe your hands aren't icepops. You can borrow my glove again, if you want."

Haru went to decline and sneezed mightily.

"See? Here, one's better than nothing. I can wrap my hand in my scarf, it'll be fine." Makoto foisted his left glove onto him.

Seeing no point in arguing, Haru put it on. It wasn't much better, to be honest. There were gaps in the seams that leaked out whatever heat it might've provided and the palm was soggy with snowmelt. But still he said:

"...Thanks."

—

The game plan was simple. Visit the snow sculptures, hit up the shops, have a good time and go home before they turned into snowmen. Should've been easy. Would've been, if it was just the two of them like they'd originally planned, but Makoto couldn't keep a secret to save his life and the first casual mention of the Snow Festival had the rest of the swim team inviting themselves along.

Nagisa came sprinting back from what he'd claimed was a bathroom break, mouth jammed with a diabetic apocalypse of a crêpe. "Didja see the signs for the snowball fight? We should do it!"

Gou peeled her eyes away from the screaming man slathering self-tanner all over himself with a paint roller at the Midwinter Muscle Dream booth for the first time since they'd arrived. "Right now?"

"Nagisa, no one's prepared. It'll throw off our itinerary completely." Rei ducked, narrowly avoiding a crêpe to the face.

Haru stuffed his hands into his pockets, sinking into the depths of his jacket collar. "It'd be too much of a hassle..."

"What!? Where's your sense of fun? Besides, the top prizes are really super cool: an all expenses paid trip to the hot springs! And the runner up prize is a bunch of free meal tickets to restaurants around town!"

"Oi!" called a familiar voice. "Didn't think I'd see you lot here."

"Rin!"

Haru could feel the headache coming on already.

"Are you by yourself?" Makoto asked.

"Nah, Mikoshiba made everybody come for a 'team building exercise.' They're all mincing about somewhere."

"Rinrin, join our snowteam! We'll make it worth your while." Nagisa dug a fistful of bubblegum out of his pocket and crammed it into Rin's.

Rin handed it straight back. "You'll have to do better than that. I'm already competing for Samezuka. Have you signed up already?"

"We haven't decided yet," Makoto said, "We're not really prepared and Haru is—"

"Haru?" Rin stole up behind him and flung an arm around his shoulder. His breath painted an uncomfortably hot patch across his cheek. "Chickening out, are you? That's a shame. I was looking forward to crushing you."

Sometimes he wondered how Rin managed to get his dander up so easily. It was smugness, he decided. That smug little smirk got him every time. "Snow is just another form of water."

"Changed your mind?"

Haru shrugged Rin off. "Don't cry when you lose."

"See? Even Haru's got the spirit!" Nagisa began dragging Rei towards sign-ups. "I'll be counting on you and your super-giga-ultra-brain to make us a winning strategy!"

"Even so—"

Gou attached herself to Rei's other arm. "There's only one good thing in life: the complete and utter destruction of your enemies."

"Why are _you_ getting excited about this?"

"We must destroy them, Rei."

"Obliteration!" Nagisa pumped his fist in the air. Gou took up the cheer alongside him and at that point, Rei seemed to give up entirely.

"Very well, I'll craft the perfect strategy to ensure our victory!"

"We'll see who's obliterating who." Rin dismissive them with a wave, ignoring Rei's maniacal cackling. "See you on the battlefield."

"Well, you heard them," Makoto sighed a long cloud of fog, then headed after their underclassmen. "Time for some _obliteration._ "

Haru shivered, and not from the cold.

—

First year of elementary school and his parents had forced him into a pair of mittens with fish patches sewn into the back of them. They smothered and clung and itched and he could barely move his fingers at all and ditched them every chance he got, leading to countless scoldings and half-serious threats to duct tape them to his wrists if he couldn't keep them on himself.

"How come you never wear your gloves?" Makoto once asked on the way to school. "Aren't you cold?"

Haru stuffed his mittens into his pocket and shuffled ahead, obstinately letting his bare hands hang free. He didn't need anyone else nagging him any more than they already had. Makoto slogged through the snow after him, huffing and puffing under the weight of all his protective gear, and latched onto his hand.

"If you don't like them, then we can do this so you won't be so cold."

In the centre of his palm blossomed a small, pleasant warmth.

—

"I really wish you'd wear something heavier when we go out." Makoto unspooled his scarf and wrapped half around Haru's neck. It smelled of oatmeal-and-sweet-almond soap. "Just until it's time for us to start."

The preamble for the snowball fight was taking an ungodly amount of time, but they had the comfort of knowing they were in the first match against Samezuka.

"Wait, you can't compete barehanded, you'll freeze your fingers off." Makoto peeled off his left glove and gave it to Haru, then pressed their gloved hands together. "We match."

There were gaps in the seams worn with age and they hung loose on his fingers, but still he said, "Thanks."

—

First year of high school and he had reasonable adult fears. Dying. Growing old and ordinary. Being alone. Those three and all combinations thereof. He'd yet to develop a taste for gloves.

The cold had been fearsome this week. Record lows, supposedly. Stuffing his hands in his pockets or his armpits only staved it off for a few minutes before it crept back in. Makoto was staying late at school. He'd had cleaning duties, then got wrangled into helping with a project of some club by some guy whose name he barely knew and he'd told Haru that it was fine for him to go home by himself, but Haru figured it couldn't really take that long and loathed the thought of sitting cosy at the kotatsu while Makoto braved the trek home alone in that ridiculous puffer coat he'd grown too big for. So he waited. He supposed there was nothing stopping him from waiting inside, but he didn't want to bother with people asking him why he was there, so he'd parked himself by front gate. It blocked some of the wind, which was nice.

He wiped his dripping nose on the back of his hand and noticed his fingers had gone pale and curled in on themselves like a dying spider. He smashed it against his leg, but it was useless, clublike. He stuck it back into his pocket. He paced. His legs creaked beneath him like a pair of splintered boards, fastened at the knees with railroad spikes. It would be just a few more minutes.

The sky darkened to a hard steel grey. Pacing started to hurt. He sat in the snow. It caked to the back of his trousers, soaking through to his jammers. He was looking forward to their usual winter afterschool ritual of hot chocolate at home—proper hot chocolate that you had to cook on the stove with real chocolate bits, not the powdered mix the twins guzzled by the litre. Time passed and he grew drowsy. He decided a quick nap couldn't hurt. A brief rest of the eyes, nothing more. Makoto would be coming soon.

He was shaken awake and there Makoto was, asking what he was doing here, as if it wasn't immediately apparent. He tried to explain, but the words melted out of his mouth like molasses, dribbling down his chest in an incoherent puddle. Next thing he knew he was being dragged into the school and Makoto was hollering for someone to come help and a few other kids carried him up to the nurse's office. The nurse chased the others off before it could turn into a circus, but let Makoto stay. They changed him into his trackie bottoms from PE and treated him with warm water and asked him why and other useless questions, pausing now and again to test his range of motion. Wires snapped in his fingers, stinging back to life within Makoto's shaking, sweating hands.

At some point—after his parents were called but before they arrived—Makoto brought a coffee and Haru clumsily cupped it and slurred platitudes about how he knew he wasn't a yeti and that he would remember to bring proper protection next time, clinging to the can until his hands were swollen with painful warmth.

Over the next couple weeks, skin peeled and sloughed and regrew and when he pressed his thumb to the fresh pink flesh of the fingertips worst afflicted, he realized he couldn't feel anything.

What gloves he'd had he threw away.

—

"All that fuss and we still lost in the second round." Makoto slouched back, head brushing against the window.

"We beat Rin."

"Is it bad of me that I laughed when he got run over by Rei's snow boulder?"

"He lived, it's fine."

"I wish you hadn't gotten eliminated so soon. Mikoshiba could go to Koshien with that arm." Makoto bumped his knee against Haru, who tapped back in turn. "At least it didn't give Rin the satisfaction of being the one who knocked you out."

"Wouldn't even talk to me afterwards."

Makoto chuckled. "We should go to the hot springs as a club activity anyway. It doesn't matter that we didn't win. What do you think?"

"Sure."

They savoured the space between them until the intercom announced their stop. They rose, stretching out their tingling legs, and disembarked into a gentle, steady snowfall. The air was frigid, still.

Makoto shivered the way you only saw in cartoons, fierce and full-bodied, hunching in on himself as he adjusted to the temperature. He started to say something, then sneezed, spraying his already soaked coat. "Geez, it's cold. Somehow it seems even colder than when we got on the train."

Haru peeled off his borrowed glove and stuffed it in Makoto's back pocket, then dug out the package he'd kept tucked in his rucksack. "Here."

"What's this?"

"Open it."

Makoto unwrapped it slow, as if even the paper was something to be cherished, revealing a pair of orange and white herringbone gloves. "Did you make these? They're beautiful!"

"I used Icelandic wool. It's water-resistant," Haru said, satisfaction glowing deep in his chest as Makoto tried them on, hands flexing as he marvelled at the craftsmanship.

"I can feel the difference already. Thank you so much. I love them."

Haru took Makoto's hands in his own, thumbing over the gloves. They were snug at the joints, but would grow more pliable over time and fit Makoto as the two of them fit one another.

Makoto made a questioning noise, frostnipped ears peeking over the cabled hills of his scarf.

"We'll wait until we warm up, then we can go home."

Makoto laughed and tightened his grip, radiance driving through Haru's core and slowly bleeding outward. "We're both pretty cold. It might take a while. You can borrow my other gloves if you want."

Haru buried his face in the front of that bulky green jacket, breath forming droplets on that sweet merino scarf, and inhaled everything that was him in one.

He didn't need gloves. This was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the Illustration Works story that seems to be alternately known as "Heading Home on A Snowy Day" and "The Walk Back Home on a Snowy Day." It's also a rewrite of a quickfic I did a few years back, which was originally written in the pseudo-script format that the CD drama transcript was. I'd set myself a handful of rules that I ended up mostly carrying over to this version—no cursing is a ballbuster of a rule for me but a necessary one—although I expanded my word limit from 500 words to 2500 because I'm the type of guy who needs to spend three paragraphs describing the smell of an armpit. [[No, that's not a joke.]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787067/chapters/13710907)
> 
> My head's been all over the place lately in terms of creative projects. Creating new story ideas, digging out old ideas I thought I'd never finish, playing around with editing videos, doodling, etc. Decided to take a break on my main project and figured I'd feel better if I could clear out some older concepts and get some of that mental clutter out of the way. Next thing I've got lined up is also short, but more my speed and relevant to recent events. Please be excite.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future.  
> 7 July 2017  
> \- 匿名重工業


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